In turn, CRM software for travel industry is a universal solution for automating and synchronizing workflows that allows even compact agencies with a small amount of staff managing relationships with hundreds of customers. Such software products allow you to keep track of customers, implement flexible systems for calculating employee bonuses, conduct marketing campaigns via SMS and email, track sales dynamics, redirect customer requests from one department to another, attach documents, etc., all in a unified interface. Thanks to such systems, the efficiency of travel agents increases, maximum customer satisfaction is ensured, and optimal conditions for sales growth are created.
In this article, we will tell you about customized CRMs for tourism.
What Are the Advantages of Own CRM System for Tourism Business?
Unfortunately, the existing CRM solutions, which there are many, often are far from taking into account all the needs of a particular business. Developers, as a rule, try to create a kind of “universal” software that would contain the maximum capabilities. For this reason, in such CRMs, part of the functionality is redundant, which may spoil the UX and force company owners to spend notable amounts regularly. Sometimes, the opposite happens, when the required functionality is missing (usually this is about the lack of integration with third-party software products).
Since the tourism business is a rather specific industry and far from the IT sector, turnkey solutions are often difficult to master. Agency employees (especially beginners) may suffer from a lack of understanding of the functionality. As a result, the chosen CRM, instead of facilitating the daily tasks, complicates the workflow, forcing you to return to your usual Google spreadsheets and other “years-old” applications.
The biggest problems with ready-made travel CRM open source solutions arise when companies need to scale existing processes (for example, when a small travel agency becomes a touring operator). Such premade products rarely provide for the possible expansion of a business and company owners have to start searching for a suitable solution from the very beginning.
Given all these nuances, in the vast majority of cases, it makes sense to focus on creating your own specialized CRM. Even though the initial investment will be an order of magnitude larger than in the case of buying a license for a finished software product, over time these investments will fully payout. Moreover, now some development companies offer low-cost modular solutions. This allows reducing the number of man-hours spent on the creation of the project in times, and, thereby, significantly reduce the budget.
CRM Features and Functions in the Travel Industry
Here is a sample list of features found in the average travel CRM software:
- Customer profiles;
- Profiles of hotels and carriers;
- Multi-level access control system;
- Online chat;
- Email and SMS mailings template designer;
- Archive of completed appeals and resolved problems;
- Analytic functions;
- Tools for employee productivity tracking;
- Task distribution and management;
- Ticket and hotel booking;
- Financial management;
- Integration with various third-party solutions;
- Mobile and offline versions.
Naturally, the above list can be supplemented with features that are necessary to achieve the goals of your business.
Benefits of Travel CRM Software for Business
Perfectly streamlined online travel CRM will provide your travel agency with several advantages, including:
- Personalized customer interaction experience. Modern consumers are accustomed to having their wishes predicted. Such an approach cannot be implemented without CRM for travel industry, because here a complete history of interactions with every customer and detailed information about them will be kept. This allows creating an individual approach and, thus, bringing the service to a completely new level.
- Seamless communication. CRM systems are universal assistants that combine all communication channels. Using the capabilities of the system, employees of your agency will be able to call directly from the application, write emails, send SMS, communicate with customers on social networks and in messengers, process appeals from the website, etc. In general, everything that previously would require repeatable switching between multiple applications and devices.
- Significant saving of your employees' time. Usually, tasks that your employees have to perform day after day quickly become boring and “burnout” sets in. Professionally crafted CRM will relieve you of these problems, taking responsibility for the implementation of many routine tasks, such as filling out the documentation (many fields in them are filled by a template), sending messages, calculating profits, etc.
- Visual analytics. Thanks to the customized travel CRM, all analytical data related to your business will be presented in an understandable format. A couple of clicks you can review the results of the day, week or eight months and four days. A few more taps and you will see that John works better than Jared, Carey does not follow the predefined customer interaction algorithms, and SEO specialist Kim deserves a raise because increasingly more applications are coming from the site.
Conclusion
As you can see, the creation of a customized travel agency CRM allows taking into account all the specific nuances of a particular business and not overpay for excess functionality. If you are interested in building such software, contact us today and we will create for you the best CRM for travel industry with capabilities to configure and scale in the shortest possible time.
